100 Bodycams Now In Use By Oklahoma City Police

Officers and supervisors spent the last three weeks training on the new body camera protocols.

News 9 checked with a police captain on Friday and he said that they have completed all of their training and 100 cameras are out on the streets. Twenty-five of them are being used at the Springlake briefing station and the same number of cameras has gone out to the other three divisions.

We are told the patrol officers who are using the cameras have already been recording video cases on a daily basis. They have already trained 275 patrol officers and 91 supervisors on the new policies and procedures.

They have been advised on how and when to turn the cameras on and off, who can view them, and what is being done to keep officers accountable.

The move came after the initial pilot OCPD bodycam program came to a halt after an arbitrator ruled in favor of the FOP, stating changes needed to be made to the original policies and procedures and then agreed upon by both parties.

“Because we have to be able to hold the officers accountable for not turning the cameras on that's a huge issue across the country,” said Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty during a news conference back in November.

For about 13 months, the FOP, OCPD and arbitrators worked on coming to terms on what needed to be in place to restart the bodycam program. Then finally back in November, Citty, the FOP and community leaders announced that they had reached an agreement that worked for all parties involved.

And thanks to a substantial federal grant the department plans to have a total of 180 cameras out in the field when this is all said and done. And those cameras will be shared among officers on every patrol shift at every station.